1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to transferring calls and more specifically to efficiently transferring calls among multiple locations while preserving the call context.
2. Introduction
In environments with multiple automatic call distributors (ACDs), where calls are shared across various locations, call transport is performed either via Voice over IP (VoIP) transport over a wide area network or traditional Public Service Telephony Network (PSTN) circuits. One significant challenge in transferring calls among multiple locations is preserving or maintaining call context for reporting, computer telephony integration (CTI), or other purposes. In other words, the data associated with a call leaving one location must be linked together in some way when the call arrives at another location. While the VoIP method of call transport can carry a call ID to resolve this issue, the transfer of calls over a PSTN network generally results in a loss of call IDs. As a result, all or part of the call context is lost.
In many cases, customers have not built-out the required network infrastructure to support sending VoIP traffic over WAN facilities. This is because, depending on the location of the different ACD facilities, such a build-out is too costly, or the volume of traffic does not justify the investment in such facilities. Some approaches to this problem, such as “Translation Routing” or “DNIS Pool Routing”, attempt to resolve this issue through a traditional CTI integration. These approaches are non-strategic to the call center shift to SIP-based applications and infrastructure because the solutions are custom to each ACD platform, and not easily extensible.